Kimetsu no Yaiba – 4 [Final Selection]

Hello and welcome to Kimetsu no Yaiba’s strongest week yet! Training concludes, the Yaiba starts the Selection begins and Tanjiro shows off his skills. Lets jump in!

Starting off, production! This was a good week for Yaiba, it looked and sounded fantastic. I’ve gushed about the animation/art before, so I’ll keep that part short this week. The water effects on Tanjiro’s sword were beautiful, and I love the thematic nature of them, as I don’t believe they have actual water powers. What I really want to talk about here though is the sound design. Both the VA’s and the music were fantastic, with Midorikawa (of Dio Brando fame) nailing it as the Demon. His whole counting sequence, and insane breakdown as to the era were chilling. Yaiba just had a lot of fun with everything this week, and as a viewer you could tell. Even going to far as to pay homage to the Dio Brando walking shot the internet loves so much. This isn’t the only place Yaiba excelled though, the story did as well.

There’s a lot to go over here, so let’s just start from the top, Urokodaki. I like Yaiba’s explanation for how difficult and ridiculous Tanjiro’s training was. Urokodaki had no intention of ever passing him, of ever training him. He just wanted to scare Tanjiro off, to make him give up, and train him a little along the way. The boulder was the capstone to this, an impossible task he was never supposed to overcome. I like what this does 2-fold. First, it helps explain why Urokodaki accepted Tanjiro so easily, this random kid. He never thought he would get this far. Second, it lays the groundwork for the second half of the episode with the Demon and Sabito. This harsher training explaining why Tanjiro could defeat the demon but others couldn’t. If you can cut a boulder, you can cut a neck.

As for the demon itself, well I loved him. First his design. It was previously established, both prior to and in this episode, that Demons are weak at the neck. So I liked that this first major demon tried to cover that weakness. Growing incredibly thick, and using its arms to cover its neck. It’s not just arbitrarily strong, its trying to cover its weaknesses while sacrificing things like movement. It also gives us a clear example of what happens to demons who eat a lot of humans change. Their bodies able to completely change from that of a humans. It really opens the door for Yaiba to throw some interesting and curious monsters at us in the future. And that’s just his physical form and combat. Yaiba made him an interesting character as well. Or at least a fun villain.

I quite enjoyed his focus on vengeance and how he ties back to Urokodaki and last episode. It turns last weeks training into part of a greater plot, while also giving him very good reason to attack Tanjiro. This could have just been a random strong demon passing by, who they would have had to overcome. Instead Yaiba made it much more personal, involving characters we already knew. Basically, he was the payoff for the entire training arc. My only complaint is, without seeing the rest of the Selection, I wish he had survived longer. That his became a game of cat and mouse, with Tanjiro being hunted and overcoming his fear or weakness. Perhaps working with the inevitable side characters to take him down. I think Yaiba missed a good opportunity for some horror elements there. However, there is still plenty of time for a new villain this arc.

Before I get into that though, I want to go over some animation ooooone last time. I loved this fight, I thought it looked great. I mentioned it before, but the best part for me continues to be the water effects. Like it takes the more traditional Japanese art and melds it with anime. From what I have seen, I also don’t believe this reflects actual water. Tanjiro’s attacks aren’t actually elemental, because if so Yaiba really dropped the ball explaining that. Way I figure it, the water is just a stylistic representation of his style, and one I like. It really pops on screen and I look forward to what other styles Yaiba manages to portray. Put simply, it’s a lot of fun and helps Yaiba standout. My Hero Academia is another Shounen, but its action is still in line with its normal art. Yaiba’s isn’t. That’s novel.

Yaiba also still has a few new mysteries cropping up, even mid arc. For instance, every central Demon Slayer appears to have a facial scar of some kind. It’s a little weird to be honest. From Tanjiro and Sabito, to our as of yet unnamed ones in this selection, all the ones that matter have one. We haven’t seen beneath Urokodaki’s mask yet, but I expect him to have one to. Is it just a quirk of Yaiba’s visual design? Or does it actually mean something, those marked in some way? I hope it means something, because while its visually interesting, it seems weirdly consistent to not have a story component. Suppose we will have to wait and see though.

So all in all, this was a really good episode of Yaiba. It closed out the sub story from last week, started the Selection arc and let Tanjiro shine post training. Yaiba was a treat in both audio and visual departments. It doesn’t have any deeper, greater story, but that’s not what I come to Shounen for. I come for good fun, and Yaiba is fulfilling that in spades. I am curious what the rest of the Selection arc has in store though. A big plot point was killed, and the arc just started. With 6 days left, whats going to be the challenge to overcome? Or will we subvert this and do another timeskip? Personally, I can’t wait to find out, and I hope you feel the same.